Natural Disasters Worksheets and Hands-On Activity Ideas

Our Natural Disasters Packet (currently FREE to download!) has notebook pages and worksheets as well as some hands-on activity ideas covering the following events:

Flooding

Mudslides

Tsunami

Tornado

Hurricane, cyclone, typhoon

Blizzard

Heat Wave

Drought

Wildfire

Sinkholes

In this packet you’ll find one page on each of these events. Often, natural disasters occur because of geologic changes or extreme weather conditions. Students explore the cause of each of these events. They also find out what damage results and examines the effect these disasters have on people, property, and infrastructure. Students fill in their own information about each natural disaster, what causes it, and give an example of a recent event and what effect it had on the community.

Natural Disasters Lapbook: You can use the interactive notebook pieces provided in this packet to create your own lapbook.

The Natural Disasters Packet is currently free to download! Let me know how it goes for your family! ~Liesl

This packet does not cover earthquakes, volcanoes, plate movement or the ring of fire because we covered that in great detail in our Earth Science Unit.

This 50+ page Earth Science Packet (now over 100 pages actually because we recently added new materials on plate tectonics and more!) includes worksheets about the solar system, the layers of the Earth, plate tectonics, the ring of fire, earthquake activity and volcanoes. I also included instructions for more than a dozen hands-on activities we did with this unit. This includes activities about plate tectonics, Pangaea, using a compass, earthquakes, volcanoes, instructions on how to make a shake table and more!

You can find out more information about that unit and all our hands-on activities here:

A number of years ago, we did some fun hands-on activities to help the kids understand what natural disasters are and why they can be so devastating. These activities are buried deep in our blog, though, and I thought I would share some of them with you again today! They are also in the Natural Disasters Packet above.

These are activities we did when the kids were about PreK and early elementary:

Mudslide: We mixed sand and cornstarch and covered a butter container container. Then we made it “rain” for a period of time to see what happened!

Hurricane Activity: The kids built paper houses out of index cards and tape. We took a straw to show what effect wind would have on our house. It fell down. So, then I let the kids reinforce their house with MORE tape! The second time round, the house withstood 1 straw. So then we added a second straw and tried again. The houses fell down and couldn’t withstand the stronger winds.

Tsunami Activity: The kids recreated a tsunami. In a flat class pan, the kids built a sandy beach (with sand and corn flour). They also made some index card houses. I first had them try hitting the picnic table with a bat, but that didn’t create strong enough waves. So then, I had LD give the table a good shake a couple of times. With that, the tsunami struck full force!

Tsunamis are generally caused by an underwater earthquake, landslide, or volcanic eruption.

You may be interested in some of our related packets:

Earth Science Unit: In this unit, we talked about the layers of the Earth, latitude & longitude, tectonic plate movement (and did a couple of great hands-on activities related to that), earthquakes (we made an earthquake shake table), mountain making, volcanoes (we did a couple of fun hands-on activities) and more

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

P.S. You might be interested in these free Homeschool Resource Guides:

Creating Your Own Homeschool Curriculum: These are some resources I made that might be helpful as you create your own homeschool plans. These are somewhere between 30 and 50 pages and are FREE to download:

Hands-On Activities, Printables, Encouragement, and More!

Hi! I’m Liesl!

Do you believe education can be exciting, inspiring, and full of joy? We do too!
I love the quote by William Butler Yeats, "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." It's about getting the kids involved, engaged, and fired up about learning (while juggling the rest of life too!)
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